Gaming & Culture —

MotorStorm

Since it was first announced, MotorStorm has been one of the most-anticipated …

Do Killer maps = killer apps?

The single-player game play is much like Burnout: you have certain tickets that contain races and placing in those races gives you points. The more points you have, the more tickets you unlock. Some tickets are only unlocked by clearing races with silvers or golds, so you'll find yourself racing certain events multiple times for the maximum amount of points.

The AI doesn't give up its place easily. The computer races hard, and it can take much practice and clever use of different routes to get a first-place win; this isn't a game that holds your hand. The amount of chaos between all the vehicles adds a certain amount of chance to things, and that's a mixed blessing. You'll feel a thrill when things go your way, and you escape a pile-up to take the lead, but sometimes you'll want to throw your controller when an errant truck takes you out as it crashes through no fault of your own.

You also have a boost that heats up your vehicle—overuse it and you'll find yourself in a middle of a nice little explosion. The single player game will span each of the eight tracks and force you to use certain vehicles in certain races or give you the run of all the vehicle classes. It's a good way to practice the tracks and handling of each of the vehicles, and you'll need it for the real meat of the game: multiplayer.

Your truck won't be this pretty for long

Multiplayer

Multiplayer supports up to 12 players at a time, and in my time playing it I found it to be largely lagless, although I did have problems with the game locking up at the “waiting for other players” screen once. You pick a server, choose a game inside that server, and get to racing. The downside to all this is there will be a lot of waiting, and that waiting will be fairly boring. You can't watch a race as it is going on, so you just have to stare at a screen that says which players are racing and listen to the in-game conversation. There also isn't any way to invite anyone on your friends list or to password the game, so getting a race going with only people you know can be a grueling experience.

Of course, once the actual game begins all these issues with the PS3's limited online options fade away. MotorStorm is a blast in single-player, but in multiplayer the game really comes alive. People curse and fight and bump... and it's madness. For all the headache involved in getting a good game going, and people dropping out and quitting is a problem, once you have a group of dedicated gamers you're going to be having a great time.

And all that could have been

For all the fun of the core gameplay, there are a few things that make the game feel a little thin. These are features that we've come to expect from racing games on other systems, and I'm not sure if their exclusion is the fault of the hardware or the software, but I did find it a little distracting. Let's run down the missing features of MotorStorm.

Custom soundtracks

First let me say that the soundtrack included in the game isn't bad at all, certainly better than most "Xtreme" games we've played. You have some Nirvana, some Lunatic Calm, some Wolfmother and Reverend Horton Heat. I enjoyed most of the tracks included, but they do get repetitive, and this is the sort of game that begs for a custom soundtrack. I love racing to my own music, and the PS3 lets me rip my CDs to the hard drive, so why can't I listen to that music while I race? The 360 has spoiled me in this area, and I'd love for MotorStorm to let me augment its already strong soundtrack.

Offline multiplayer

I get this: when you make a game that looks as good as MotorStorm you want to maintain as much graphical integrity as possible. You have to make some hard choices if you want to add in split-screen multiplayer. But everyone I talked to about this game wanted to come over and play it, and everyone was disappointed when they found out they had to take turns with the controller. Online multiplayer is a great feature and tons of fun, but I really wanted to play against people on my couch. The PS3 is a powerhouse of a system, this is something they should have worked harder to include.

And waiting... and waiting... and waiting...

Roll your own single-player events

The races in the tickets are all fun, and I liked that it made me try each vehicle type with each track, but I would have loved to have been able to tell the game that I wanted to race on the Rockhopper track with nothing but ATVs and Big Rigs just to see the giant trucks go flying around the jumps, or maybe Mud Pluggers and Racing Trucks in the Mudpool for something straight out of a demolition derby. This would have been a great way to expand the replayability of the game and give players even more practice with certain scenarios before taking their skills online.

These three things would have gone a long way towards improving an already-solid title. The single player is limited to the races in the tickets; there are no time trials or quick races or any of the other expected features from a racing game of this caliber. After you hone your skills, it's pretty much online play or bust. If you don't have your PS3 online, this may be a purchase you should think twice about.